When collecting seeds from hybrids you may find that the resulting plants are different (for example in flower colour or size) to the original or, in some cases, will not grow at all because the seeds are sterile. But sometimes the diversity can bring pleasing results and it can be fun to see what’s going to appear.

How to collect seeds

There are different methods to collect seeds, depending on the type of fruit. When the seeds are contained in pods (such as Nigella seedheads, shown below) you should remove the pod from the plant when it’s ripe, but before it opens. Keep it in a paper bag, or between sheets of newspaper, in a warm room and they should open and shed their seeds for you to gather up. The same method can be used for catkins or cones.

Winged fruit (such as from acers) should be picked from the plant when they’re ripe. You can either leave the wings on or remove them to make it easier to handle the fruit.

Nuts can be removed from the plant when still green, or when ripe and ready to fall – the method will vary slightly from plant to plant. Remove the outer husks before sowing, but retain the shell of the nut.

Fleshy fruits (such as berries) should be collected just as they turn from green to their ripe colour. If the fruit is large (eg apples) you can cut it open and take the seeds out by hand. For smaller fruit (such as holly berries) place the fruits in a sieve and mash them up under running water. Put the resulting pulp in a container full of water, give it a shake and allow the contents to settle. Then gently pour the pulp and water out of the jar, which should leave the seeds at the bottom. Dry them on paper towels.

How to sow or save them

Always discard any seeds which appear to have imperfections or damage, and any which show signs of disease or pests. If you have used the jar method to separate fleshy fruit from its seeds, don’t use any seeds which floated as these will be dead.

If you want to plant the seeds yourself then you can do so straight away. Find out about sowing seeds. If you want to store them then most seeds are best kept in paper bags within an airtight container. Add desiccant to remove excess moisture (like those little silica gel sachets you often get in shop packaging) to prevent too much moisture accumulating. Some seeds, such as walnut and oak seeds, need to be kept moist, so store these in damp vermiculite or sand. If possible store the seeds in your fridge as this will help them keep for longer.

Find out more about collecting seeds…

Use it yourself or give it to someone who needs it

The most obvious answer to garden waste is to have a compost heap producing organic matter to add back into your garden (a typical garden compost heap is shown on the right). Find out more about composting. You may find that your local authority will subsidise the cost of a compost bin.

You can make your own liquid fertiliser for the garden. Steeping cuttings from soft plant parts in water for a few weeks will produce a liquid feed which can then be diluted and applied to plants just like a shop-bought feed. Comfrey, bracken, clover, groundsel, nettles, borage, chicory and strawberries are particularly good plants for making liquid feed.

There are many ways to use woody cuttings from your garden, though you should ensure that no diseased materials are re-used:

• To create supports for perennials or climbers.
• As features within the garden, large and interestingly shaped pieces of wood are particularly good for this as they look attractive with plants growing over them or can be useful as low seats.
• For garden edging or raised beds – either by lying long pieces lengthways supported by stakes on either side, by weaving more pliable stems through upright stakes, by sticking smaller pieces upright into the ground to form an informal edge or by sticking both ends of pliable stems into the soil to create a ‘hoop’ effect.
• If you have an open fire or wood burner then cuttings can provide winter fuel, including smaller pieces which are useful as kindling. If you don’t have a fire, bundle it up and advertise it on a recycling website, such as Freecycle, Freesharing, Freegle (UK) and Any Good To You (UK). Remember that wood should be seasoned (left to dry out for at least 6 months (softwood), up to 2 years (hardwood)) before being used on a fire and that not all wood is suitable for burning in this way.
• Chipping/shredding woody waste can give you an excellent garden mulch or additive for your compost heap. Chippers can be hired for the day, though you will still need to cut the wood down to the right size to go into the chipper. To eliminate this work you could employ a local gardening company to do the chipping for you.

For those who have an artistic bent, many garden cuttings can be used to provide home decorations. Pliable stems (willow, hazel or dogwoods are the best, but most young woody growth will work) can be used to create wreaths or similar decorations. Cuttings from hollies, conifers, willows and variegated evergreens can provide a wintery alternative to indoor flower arrangements, or be stuck into outside containers to provide a backdrop to your winter bedding display.

If you have old patio slabs or pieces of rubble to get rid of then you can usually find someone who needs them via a recycling website, such as Freecycle, Freesharing, Freegle (UK) and Any Good To You (UK).

Turf can be a real problem to get rid of as it’s so heavy. But if you have the space you can stack turf (grass side down) in a dark spot and leave it for a year or so. After this time the grass will have broken down and you’ll have a great soil improver to add onto your beds or veg patch.

Your local authority

Most local authorities offer a collection service for garden waste (though they generally won’t take large branches), which they then compost. Because they are composting on such a large scale the compost heaps reach a much higher temperature, which means that they can take most garden weeds and diseased materials – though you should check what they will and won’t accept as they won’t appreciate you putting things like Japanese Knotweed into your garden waste bin!

If you frequently have a large amount of garden waste then your council may allow you to purchase an extra bin to contain it, or use additional waste bags. If you have a ‘one off’ large load of waste then it’s worth calling your local authority as many will offer a special collection service, which can be much cheaper than hiring a skip.

The majority of local refuse disposal sites/tips will also accept garden waste, including rubble, soil and turf, which is generally sent on for composting or recycling in other ways.

Image courtesy of Master Isolated Images at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I always feel very sorry for lawns. Almost every lawn is used and abused by its owners and rarely given the care and attention that it needs. Yet the plucky grass continues to grow and provide that fabulously green surface for us to relax and play on.

We seem to forget that a lawn isn’t one big plant, it’s thousands of individual plants. Consider the amount of time and attention you give your turf. Now imagine how much time and attention you’d give to a border full of thousands of plants. Are you starting to feel some sympathy for the lowly lawn?

Autumn is the perfect time to redress the balance. The summer is over and your lawn has been trampled on, parched by dry spells, drowned in wet weather, hacked about with a lawnmower and not even given a bite to eat! So this is a great opportunity to give it some TLC to build it up ready for next summer’s abuse.

Not everyone has hours to spend in the garden, and autumn is already busy with winter preparations, so I’ve split my advice into what you really should do for your lawn, and what additional tasks would be of benefit if you have the time.

What you really should do for your lawn this autumn

• Remove any fallen leaves from your lawn straight away. Leaves cut out the light and water reaching the lawn and can encourage lawn diseases.
• Keep on mowing your lawn once a week, but make the cutting height slightly higher so the grass grows a bit longer.
• Lawns build up a layer of ‘thatch’ at the base of the grass. This fibrous material can be useful to the lawn as it can reduce water loss, but once it gets more than a couple of centimetres thick it can greatly reduce the water which reaches the roots and provide a perfect environment for pests and diseases. Raking over your lawn with a spring tined rake can pull thatch up to the surface, or alternatively a motorised scarifier (which looks like a small lawn mower) can be used. Remove the raised thatch. This is best done in September.
• Aerating your lawn is on the ‘what you really should do’ list for those of you who have compacted areas in your lawn, otherwise you can treat it as an extra task if you have the time to do it. Compaction is often found in parts of the lawn used as pathways or play areas. Heavy use presses down the soil and stops water and nutrients reaching the grass roots, causing the turf to die in severe cases. If this sounds like part of your lawn, then you need to get a garden fork and stick it into the ground (so about 10cm is underground), wiggle it around a bit and pull it out – which will create an entrance for air and water to loosen up the structure of the soil. Repeat this every 15cm across the compacted area. Alternatively you can use a hollow tined fork for severe compaction. This works like an apple corer and pulls out cylinders of soil, leaving a much larger hole. You should only do hollow tine aerating every 3 years though, as it can remove quite a significant amount of soil from your lawn.
• Your lawn needs feeding in autumn as much as it does in spring, but it needs a different type of food. In spring we give lawns nitrogen rich feeds to encourage fresh new leaf growth. In the autumn, however, we need to build up the root system and overall strength of the grass plants. So a balanced fertiliser is used – you can usually find proprietary brands of autumn lawn feed in garden centres.
• If you have bare patches in your lawn then autumn is the perfect opportunity to overseed them, as the new grass plants will have plenty of time to get established before heavy use in the summer. Small packs of grass seed are available, simply scatter the seed according to the density recommended on the pack and then lightly rake them in (they’ll have better access to water and will be more hidden from hungry birds if lightly raked in).

What else would help your lawn if you have time

• Take a besom brush and use it to scatter any worm casts on your lawn before you mow it, so they don’t get ’smeared’ into the lawn. If you have the time this is worthwhile doing before every mow season-round.
• Dig out perennial weeds. This is usually done in the spring when they’re more obvious (or dealt with using a lawn weed killer), but this is also a good time to remove them as it gives the grass a chance to grow into the gap before the spring.
• Top dress your lawn to even out minor dips and promote denser growth. You can purchase a proprietary lawn top dressing or make your own using a mix of peat (or peat alternative), loam and sand, usually proportionally more sand on heavy clay soils and less on loamy or sandy soils. Make sure you’ve finished raking/scarifying and aerating your lawn before you top dress. Spread the top dressing over the lawn using the flat back of a rake to distribute it evenly. If you find there are still specks of top dressing clinging to the tops of the grass blades you can brush over the lawn lightly to knock them off.
• Neatening up the edging of the lawn can be done in autumn to save a job in the spring.

If you’re anything like me, the autumnal ‘big push’ to sort out the garden has provided me with a shed strewn with garden implements, old labels, pots needing washing, odd bits of string (well, they might come in useful!) and no end of other bits and pieces.

While I’d love to have a wide range of stylish storage solutions to help me keep the place tidy, it’s a bit difficult to justify the expense for mud encrusted bulbs, chewed pencils and blunted penknives. So this year I’ve thought hard to come up with some free (or almost free) ways to organise your shed…

Biscuit/cracker tins

Perfect for storing seeds; you can even use a strip of cardboard (eg from a cereal box) and glue it into the box as a divider so you can have flower seeds one side and veg seeds the other.

Shoe boxes

Dark but air permeable (add a few holes with a metal skewer if they’re too solid to allow much air flow), these are great for storing bulbs, eg summer bulbs which are waiting for spring planting. They aren’t rodent-proof though, so you might still want to store the boxes in a cupboard or on a high shelf to protect them.

Plastic veg boxes

Supermarkets often package delicate vegetables (such as mushrooms) in relatively deep plastic boxes. These can be very useful as storage boxes, particularly for plant labels, string and seed packets, plus they stack up together neatly for when you’re not using them.

Milk/margarine cartons

Plastic cartons of the type used for milk or margarine are often cut out for cheap plant labels. But you can also use them as a free way of creating useful labels for your shed – in the hope that other shed-users will take the hint and put things away in the right place! Cut out a label sized to fit the edge of your shelf and use a couple of small tacks to nail it in place. Then create your label with a permanent marker (or a plant label pen).

Poles or rails

Ceiling space is often neglected when organising a shed, but it can be put to good use. However, you do need to either have a high ceiling or find a bit of it that you won’t need to walk under (eg over where you store the compost bags). Using a old broom handle or wardrobe rail, set up your own hanging rail from the ceiling (if you don’t have proper rail fixings you can screw a metal ‘eye’ into the ceiling then fix the rail to it using cable ties). Get some S hooks (you may have to buy these, but they’re readily available at most DIY stores and garden centres) and get hanging! Plenty of things can be hung from the rail to get them out of the way, such as bags of perlite/vermiculite, bundles of pea sticks, garden clothing, kneeling pads, garden sieves and light plant supports.

Old jars

Last but not least comes this old favourite! Great for storing pens, dibbers, plant ties, fixings, bits of twine, plant labels, and more. If you don’t have any shelf space left for them, try nailing the lids to the underside of shelves so that the jars will ‘hang’ underneath.

I hope you’ll find a helpful idea here to get organised for the new year. Now all I need to do is stop procrastinating and go to sort out my own shed…but maybe I’ll have just one more mince pie first…

Perhaps I hadn’t realised just how cold as I woke up the next morning to walk the dog in a beautiful, diamond encrusted world. Yes, we’d had frost. Dammit! How does it know? I haven’t seen a frost for weeks and, the day after I do the pruning, whumpf! A frozen landscape greets me! Hopefully the frost hasn’t been hard enough to do any real damage, though I’ll be waiting with baited breath to see if it has pushed the poor little miniature rose into the ‘kill’ rather than the ‘cure’ option.

I’m sure I heard Mother Nature amiably chuckling at my curses…

The garage in question is a typical gardener’s one. By which I mean it’s so full of gardening paraphernalia that there’s no chance of fitting a car in it, much to the chagrin of any non-gardening car owners in the household.

As a dutiful gardener I should, of course, have had a good clear out and clean up at the end of the gardening season. But I didn’t and it’s all the builders’ fault, honest!

Let me put forth my case for why I can’t be to blame for this lax attitude.

We asked our local builder to put a new window and stable style door in the back of garage, which doubles as a potting shed, so that I could work inside it with natural light but without our dog getting in and extending his chewaholic addiction to my gardening equipment.

Unfortunately our builder is rather popular and the weeks of waiting stretched into months …and of course I kept thinking ‘there’s no point sorting out the garage until the work is done’. Well, finally, we have our new door and window (very finely fitted and worth the wait), so I’m off to sort things out (just as soon as I’ve procrastinated over this blog a little more).

I can only contemplate the horror of mucky pots, strewn seeds, dated compost and grubby tools that waits for me. I guess the moral of the story is that time and tide may wait for no man, but that gardening tasks have a little more patience. So if you’re also putting off a garden job, why not roll up your sleeves and get on with it today? Just think of it as ‘character building’!